What's generally the best strategy for minimising the amount of casualties you suffer when you get farmed?

I figured buying untrained mercs was the best way to go, but whenever I recon someone they usually have a huge amount of trained attack soldiers. Does this help at all when you have an additional buffer? What I mean is, if you lose 100 untrained mercenaries a day because of attacks, and if I trained 3000 untrained soldiers into atack soldiers, would I still lose the same amount of untrained mercenaries? It doesn't seem to make much sense that a higher amount of attack soldiers would help when the mercs are the first to die anyway.

Another question: I read somewhere that there is a difference between the listed spy rating and the actual spy rating, based on the percentage of spies in your fighting force. Do tools figure into this beyond obviously having at least one tool per spy when you send them on a mission? And does the same principle apply to sentries?

Thanks in advance.

blunderball

5th March 2005, 08:53 AM

Train all your soldiers to Attack Specialists, except those that hold Defensive weapons. Then buy a few mercs to buffer the casualties.

For example, say you have 100 Invisibility shields and 10,000 soldiers. To lower the amount of casualties most effectively, train 9,900 soldiers to Attack Specialists and the other 100 to Defence Specialists. Then buy some Untrained/Defence Mercenaries to buffer out any casualties you will get.

Attack specialists don't take part in the battle when you get attacked, and Defence Specialists don't when you attack.

The downside to this strategy is that you will have a lot more casualties when you attack someone else.

hitoriki

5th March 2005, 09:03 AM

Another upside to this strategy is that it will be easier to sell off to your officers or friends. Also much cheaper. You could just train all your defense soldiers to attack and then get your friend to attack you and retrain them again :)

the saboteur

5th March 2005, 09:19 AM

Another way would be to train more spies and sentries. U only start losing spies and sentries from an attack if you are defeated and have more than 1000 spies OR sentries.

Is not likely ur going to get attacked anyway if you have a low Total fighting force and have high DA.

Training all untrained attack specialists cost quite alot of gold and a waste since you are going to re-assign them later. (However this does maximise TBG)

It depends how u play overall. I would personally leave them untrained until I feel I cannot cope with the excessive TBG and the train them to spies, then any1 who attacks me will get sabbed back to stone age. Muhahaha! But thats the way I play, I like to sabb!

SterlingFalco

5th March 2005, 10:13 AM

I see what you're saying. Casualties taken is not based on total personnel, but on the percentage of your personnel that is eligible for taking part in a given type of battle. So you basically can't go wrong with training so many attack specialists, since the number of soldiers participating in attack mission will stay the same, except if you train lots of defense specialists (which I don't do anyway)! Brilliant! Thanks, mate!

the saboteur: Hence your name, eh.

So if your spy and sentry totals go over 1,000, you'll start losing them from attacks? Even when you have mercenaries to deflect the blow? That's be unfortunate. My solution was indeed to train spies and sentries, but the fall in TBG annoyed me... I'll probably end up doing a little of both, then.

Xer0n

5th March 2005, 04:02 PM

get lots of mercs :P

Stephen

5th March 2005, 06:02 PM

Mercs don't reduce your casualties though. They just act as a buffer. Training your troops is the best way to go.